


forever and a day

by Falmarien



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 05:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12051951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falmarien/pseuds/Falmarien
Summary: He didn’t dream of Gibson often.





	forever and a day

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to [cavale](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cavale) :)

He didn’t dream of Gibson often.

Mostly he dreamt of water, vast and endless and suffocating, of being trapped and drowning in blurry nothingness, and then found himself jumping awake, soaked with sweat but chilled to the bones. He dreamt of sands, of wide beaches and faceless uniforms, one by one shot down by invisible rifles. He dreamt of bodies, floating ones, twisting ones, ragged ones, and, most of all, unmoving ones. He dreamt of gunshots, of mines and of torpedoes. He dreamt of it all, but not Gibson.

He did think of him often, which was rather odd.

(It kept happening, he kept calling him Gibson in his head and stopping himself, but, well, it wasn’t like he had any other options.)

Gibson’s hands had felt like the others’ in his hands. Gibson had looked just like the others in his stolen clothes. Even Gibson’s face didn’t look that different from any of the tommies. He was merely a face amongst tens of thousands, similarly pale and dark-haired, young and dirty and a little on the skinny side.

He was no different, but he kept seeing him, and he wasn’t quite sure why.

On street corners, on window reflections, on passers-by; in the mirror, when he was barely awake and the lights were low. He would want to call out, but the name would just curl and die on the tip of his tongue, like damp ashes. He realised he didn’t know what Gibson’s voice sounded like, his only reference that simple, frightened confession, so mostly he remembered Gibson’s eyes, and _Psst_. 

For all he knew, he’d probably be long dead if not for that small, random sound.

That first day when he was back home, still slightly wobbly on his feet, he stopped at the doorstep, and took a deep breath before pushing the door open like it was some sort of hardship. His mum was in the hallway in an instant, wild-eyed with surprise.

“Hi,” he said. His voice sounded—flat, strange with disuse, even to his own ears, so he tried again. “I’m back.”

His mum gasped almost inaudibly, covered her mouth, smiled, and hugged him, calling for his dad. He closed his eyes, letting that dry warmth surround him, his mum’s figure soft and frail between his arms but surprisingly solid.

Still, that solidness did nothing for his dreams, which were simply unstoppable after the initial exhaustion had worn off, lurking and rushing and _always there_. The days were long and it felt like the whole country was in a false state of peace, in suspense, waiting for the inevitable invasion with a stoic sense of forced calmness, and the summer was just bright and warm and blandly _pleasant_ as if some unknown forces of will were mocking them.

Eventually, waking up from trying dreams started to feel almost annoying, if that made any sense at all. He knew it probably was too bloody ungrateful for him to be thinking like this, but it really was. And he’d stopped believing that things would make sense these days, anyway.

 

* * *

 

He thought of Gibson often, which had been odd at first, then days rolled by and it had become numbly familiar, and then it was somehow anchoring. He was home now and he didn’t _feel_ it, everyone was waiting for disasters to drop on their doorstep, or a letter of conscription, and he thought of Gibson, perhaps floating perhaps surviving or perhaps, most likely, long burnt to ashes, and he thought of the fact that he didn’t get to be home, and felt something in him churned.

There were tales, tales of people coming back from the trenches with broken souls or with no souls at all, of people with eyes that were forever blank, forever on the horizon when life was moving along by their feet. He hadn’t wanted that to be his future, but now—it was bleak and it was dull, but it was something, and he guessed having a numbed mind was better than those with their minds trapped, subjected to violent fluctuation with no way out, engulfed by waves, again and again.

 

* * *

 

And the news arrived. France had surrendered.

 

* * *

 

It was always the hardest when you couldn’t be sure, that was the thing. He hadn’t known.

He remembered searching for Gibson on that little boat, thinking he might’ve missed him amongst the oil-covered faces. He didn’t know if he was dragged to the bottom of the sea in that shredded ship, if he was burnt in that ill-timed fire, if he had drowned afraid of breathing flames…or if he got rescued by some other boats around. Maybe. 

It was in the papers, thousands of French troops left behind in Dunkirk were thrown into camps, and thousands more had been deployed back to France shortly after the evacuation, just in time for their surrender, and probably Gibson would be dead anyway if he had been one of them. That was what he had told himself, at least. Whatever happened wasn’t his doing, even if he had been willing to cede, to do worse—but it gnawed at him, and wouldn’t go away.

He dreamt of an outstretched hand. In a sea aflame, on a sinking hospital ship, under the heavy wooden ladder by the mole—an outstretched hand, always, in the unbearable, unending wreck that he’d learnt to call war. 

He felt cold, and everything was wet, and a hand would pull him upward, with such strength that he would just go with it, gulping off that sweet, sweet air when he broke out of the water—

Gibson’s was far from the first or the last hand of help he’d clutched on that foreign continent; neither was his death the first he’d encountered. But he realised what was special about Gibson, now. 

Sitting in this tiny room, in the dust under the sun and worlds away from battlefields, he wasn’t entirely sure but he thought, perhaps, in his mind the line of Gibson’s chin was starting to fade, overlapping and merging with all those others. Yet he remembered those eyes, because most of the time they were so _sane_ , because they were focused in a way like no others, because he had never been the talkative sort and between the two of them words weren’t even needed, he was already closer to him than anyone else on that damned beach. Alex had caught him off guard when he asked _how can you not know_ , albeit absently, and he had just shrugged, not wanting to explain, not knowing how.

(He’d started to look for news of French soldiers in the papers, on the radio. But what good would that do?)

They were nameless nobodies on that beach. But they were nameless together.

Gibson was with him in France. Gibson was with him on the beaches. Gibson was with him on the seas and oceans. Gibson was with him, and then he wasn’t.


End file.
